Dusted, I think it was, said something good about this, so I picked it up and never quite had the stomach for it, until finally a long car ride with only over-familiar alternatives finally convinced me.
Ok, so one guy plays the piano, the other guy manipulates recordings of said piano playing to make some interesting music. Sounds good to me! In theory, I'm into this stuff. Except. Sigh. This is the kind of stuff that makes people start The Shiteasters. How do you ruin this concept? How do you let this basically sound like a guy aimlessly playing the piano, while some guy occasionally rubs on a balloon or closes a hi hat? There isn't enough structure, sounding too indulgent, too formless, and simply not adventurous enough to sound interesting. Why bother having a guy manipulate these sounds if all he's going to do is make a piano player that played a line once sound like he has a mind to play it over and over and over again arhymically? Couldn't you more easily just find a piano player with a mind to just do that?
I'm being a bit harsh. But this too me is the classic example of music that has only a passing interest in actually being listened to. And dammit, my time is more valuable than that. I could have listened to a David Bowie album I've never heard instead!
Perhaps most damningly, most fuck-you-ing-ly, the last two "bonus" songs sound like what I wanted the rest of the album to sound like. On bonus 1 we get distortion, Disintegration Loops desolation and Mogwai epic buzz and fade, on distortion 2 we get more ambient mess (though I may have been more amicable to the latter because the former snapped me out of the daze caused by 40 minutes of aimless piano).
After I dumped 1000 words or so on Radiohead for their pseudo-ambient meanderings, here I so quickly dismiss what might be a rich, subtle work of post-post-everything genius. Guess that's the chance you take.
Maybe I'm a lazy reviewer. I wasn't even supposed to be doing reviews.
2/5
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